Lonesome Howl Page 6
This mountain seemed a good place to come.
Any excuse to leave.
Wolf?
Who cares.
The only animal I knew
was the one I wanted to escape from.
And now?
I’ll find us somewhere to shelter tonight
and tomorrow I’ll take the long walk back,
straight to the Jackson farm,
and when Jake’s dad sees me running . . .
well, everything he thinks about the Hardings
will be right.
Jake: the crow, and the cave
A crow swoops down from the tree
and lands on the cliff edge,
not five metres away.
It looks at me
and lets out a pitiful squawk.
‘I know how you feel,’ I say.
The crow spies something below and flaps away.
That reminds me.
We have apples, water,
Lucy’s bread
and the last of the sandwiches.
Enough for the night.
I gently touch my ankle.
It’s almost swelling before my eyes.
Lucy calls a loud ‘coooeee’ from above.
She’s easing down the track,
her hair bouncing.
‘Guess what I found?’ she says.
‘A doctor out on a bushwalk!’
‘No.’
‘A luxury mountain resort?’
‘No, silly.’
‘A rescue helicopter!’
Lucy laughs.
‘A cave. Just up there.
It only goes a few metres into the cliff,
but it’s dry,
out of the mist and the wind.’
I say, ‘I’d prefer a helicopter.
I’ve always wanted a free ride.’
Lucy leans down to help me up
and says,
‘If you don’t stop joking
I’ll break your other foot.’
Lucy: in the dark, in the quiet
He’s holding his foot
making pathetic jokes
and I’m sure he’s doing it for me.
I know how much pain he’s in;
how much it hurts when things get damaged.
I put that out of my mind.
It’s my fault for rushing, escaping, so quickly.
Now I have to make it right.
We’ll be okay.
A night in a cave,
in the dark,
alone.
I carry Jake’s pack
and help where I can
as he drags himself
up the narrow track.
When he rests,
I hold his hand
and he grips tight,
steadying himself,
breathing slow and heavy.
‘It’s not far now, Jake.’
Wishing us into the cave.
Jake: a few hundred metres
A few hundred metres.
An hour.
Crawling,
dragging,
sweating
and shivering
in the mist.
My fingers are numb
from digging into the dirt,
pulling myself along.
Lucy walks beside me,
leaning down to hold my hand when I rest.
‘It’s not far now, Jake.
Not far.’
I think of the cave
and the cold
and Dad in our farmhouse
drumming his strong fingers
on the kitchen table,
waiting for me,
thinking I’m lost somewhere,
with a Harding.
He’ll be wrong.
I’m not lost.
And I’m glad Lucy’s here.
SEVEN
The cave
Jake: the cave
The cave is narrow
but deep enough for shelter.
I drop my bag against the wall
and slump back,
exhausted from the slow climb.
My foot throbs –
an angry pulse.
I cup my hands
and blow warmth
into my aching fingers.
Lucy stands at the entrance,
hands reaching to the roof,
looking into the misty cloud.
She’s thinking the same thing as me.
Firewood.
‘We won’t be in darkness all night.
I’ve got a torch,’ I say.
She turns to me.
‘It’s too wet for firewood.
We’d smoke ourselves to death.
I’m not scared of the dark anyway.’
I grin.
‘That’s good.
Because I’m petrified!’
Lucy says,
‘Fractured ankle,
scared of the night,
no firewood.
Anything else I should know?’
‘A few things,
but I’ll tell you later,
when it gets really dark
and the mist creeps in,
and the wolf howls . . .’
We both laugh at ourselves
and our big wolf adventure.
Jake: night
Lucy sits beside me.
We’re in this together.
Outside the light is fading.
We listen to the sound of water
dripping off the cave entrance.
I flash my torch
at the wall opposite,
waving it up and down.
Lucy taps my arm
and points at the beam.
‘What’s that?
Your cave drawing of a wolf?’
‘No.
SOS by torchlight.’
‘Very good, Jake.
Pity there’s no one to see it,
except me.’
‘You’ll do.
At least you stayed, Lucy.
Your brother,
he would have left me here,
alone, waiting until morning.’
‘Peter would have got lost hurrying home.
You’d be a skeleton in a cave!’
‘Well then,
I’m really glad you’re here.’
Lucy smiles and goes to punch my arm,
but I grab her hand and hold it tight.
She wraps her fingers in mine.
Neither of us wants to let go.
Our hands drop gently between us
and, for a moment, all I feel
as I rest against my backpack
is her warm hand in mine.
Lucy: Jake’s pulse
I don’t get any of this.
We’re sitting next to each other
in the vanishing light
holding hands.
If anyone tried this at school
I’d slap them.
What happens now?
I’m glad it’s dark in here,
to hide my blushes.
Maybe this won’t be so bad.
At least Jake doesn’t hate me.
I lean back
and I’m surprised to feel
his pulse,
beating steady through his hand.
Or maybe it’s my own heartbeat?
Imagine his dad walking in now.
Imagine my dad.
Shit.
I don’t know who’d be more scared,
me or Jake.
To hell with parents.
They’re not here.
Not tonight.
Lucy: in the sunshine
Sometimes when I’m alone
by Wolli Creek
in the early morning,
all I hear is a gentle ripple
of water over rocks.
I sit on the bank,
close my eyes
and time just drifts.
Sunshine warms my body.
I swear my heart beats slower
and that’s all the movement I need.
I read about meditation once.
It must be like this.
You switch off
every bad thought and memory
and all you know is warmth
settling on you.
I stay by the creek
as long as I can.
It’s my place,
where no one can reach.
Sitting next to Jake,
his hand in mine,
that’s like sunshine
beside Wolli Creek.
Jake: Lucy’s prayer
‘Jake?’
Lucy’s voice is a whisper
in the ink-black stillness.
‘Do you pray?
At night, for things you want?’
I can feel my heart,
beating,
tracing a blood line
down to my throbbing ankle.
I don’t answer.
‘Every night
I lie in bed
listening to Peter snoring
in the next room
and the dogs scuffling outside
on the creaky verandah.
I pray for impossible things.
No more wars.
No more floods
or bushfires.
Sometimes I list everything bad in the world:
kidnapping,
murder,
terrorist attacks,
car crashes,
death by lightning,
death by drowning,
and I pray for it all to stop.
I’m not sure who I’m praying to.
But alone,
on our shitty little farm,
a minute of prayer can’t hurt.
Look,
it’s better than what my brother does
in bed at night.
Fart-bombs.
Flapping blankets and giggling.’
Lucy: my little world
I’ve never told anyone
what I just told Jake.
About my prayers.
I just blurted it all out.
He listened
and I think he understood.
He kept holding my hand.
As I was talking
I wondered,
am I horrible for being pleased
we’re stuck here tonight?
Is that bad?
I’m sorry about his ankle
and the hurt he’s got,
but I’m glad he’s here.
I feel like one of those Trobriand women.
This cave is my island, my little world.
It’s good.
I just want to enjoy this feeling.
This powerful feeling.
Jake: the locusts
I shine the torch
towards the cave entrance
and the impenetrable mist.
I switch it off
and we sit in the dark,
our shoulders touching.
‘Do you remember the locust plague
a few years back?
After the rains,
all the paddocks were green
and the sheep were eating their fill
for the first time in months.
Remember?
Then the locusts came.
The sheep huddled under the trees,
while the grass disappeared
in a brown haze,
like wicked magic.
I was so angry
I put on my cricket helmet,
stretched mosquito net over the face guard,
took my bat
and stood in the middle of the paddock
practising my hook shot
until the bat was stained yellow.
It was all I could do.
Mum and Dad sat on the verandah
watching their work go bad
while I played cricket,
and lost.’
‘What did they say, Jake?
When you came in?’
‘Dad shook my hand,
and Mum said,
“Good innings, son!”
And the next morning,
Dad was out early on his tractor,
unloading bales of hay in the paddocks,
feeding his sheep,
as if nothing had happened.’
Lucy: the plague
I remember the plague too.
I was twelve.
Mum and Peter were in town.
Dad and I went out to round up
the few sheep we had left.
We spent hours in the paddock,
running back and forward,
chasing the sheep in circles,
whistling at the dogs,
locusts crashing into our faces.
Dad got madder and madder,
yelling at me;
blaming me for the wandering flock,
for the locusts,
for him being stuck on the farm.
I was running flat out
trying to get the sheep into the shed
with Martha and Winnie.
All afternoon,
running around the stupid paddock,
chasing stupid sheep,
getting splattered by stupid locusts,
with my stupid father
waving his arms like a madman,
shouting abuse –
not at his dumb sheep,
or his worthless dogs,
or the locusts –
but at me.
What was I to do?
Somehow I got the sheep in the shed.
I fell down on the hay,
exhausted,
while Dad kept swearing,
calling me useless.
I was twelve
for God’s sake.
What did he want from me?
Jake: eucalypt
We stop talking,
exhausted by the climb
and the memories of locusts.
I drift asleep for a few moments
but the pain stirs.
I feel Lucy’s hand go limp,
then squeeze,
then go limp again.
She’s having a dream,
or a nightmare.
I hold her hand firm
to let her know I’m here.
I think of the wolf,
and how Dad’s story has led me and Lucy
to this cave.
I don’t care about my ankle.
I’m glad we came here.
Lucy’s body jerks
and her legs flex
as though she wants to run.
I whisper her name
but she doesn’t wake.
I lean close to her hair.
It smells of eucalypt.
Jake: on hard ground
My body feels numb
sitting on this hard ground,
helpless,
waiting out the night,
knowing the chance to find the wolf is gone.
I feel my pulse race
as the ache throbs through my body.
Now it’s me who wants to howl,
in pain and frustration at being stuck here,
knowing that when I get home
Dad’s going to blame Lucy
and tell me again,
the Hardings are no good.
He’s wrong, but how do I convince him of that?
There’s more chance of him
believing the wolf is just a wild dog.
He knows what he believes.
It’s up to me to prove him wrong.
Peter
She’s run away, I reckon.
Don’t you, Mum?
She’s taken her bag
and she took food.
I was going to eat that!
Maybe she’s not coming back.
Are we going to look for her?
Call the cops?
Get a sea
rch party?
Wow. That’d be really cool.
She won’t be able to hide
from no search party.
We can get the dogs
to sniff her clothes.
They’ll lead us right to her.
What do you think, Mum?
It’s pretty late.
We don’t have to go out in the dark,
do we?
Maybe we should wait till morning.
She’ll come home by then.
And why is Dad just standing
in the back yard, Mum?
Staring at the hills.
Jake: stories
Lucy wakes,
pushing back her hair
and staring out at the night.
‘Do you really believe
we’ll see your wolf, Jake?
Honestly?’
I search long into the dark,
and think, Not tonight,
not in this cave.
But I know she’s asking me
if I believe in the wolf,
believe that it exists.
‘When I was growing up,
Dad loved to tell me about the wolf.’
Maybe Lucy’s prayers are the same
as Dad and his story.
It’s what they hold onto;
it doesn’t matter if they’re true.
‘So yes, Lucy.
My dad saw it.
That’s enough for me.’
In the pit of my stomach
I hope he’s right,
but
he was wrong about Lucy.
Lucy: lies
When Jake says that
I get so angry,
I want to shake him and shout,
‘Parents lie!
Parents say what they want
to get their own way.’
I know it’s no use.
Jake and his dad
have their little story to fall back on.
It’s not up to me to prove them wrong.
Hell.
I don’t care if it’s a wolf,
or a wild dog,
or a bloody ghost.
To me,
it’s an excuse to leave home.
Jake can believe what he likes.
Lucky him.
I say,
‘Jake, if your dad believed in Santa,
I guess you would too.’
‘Santa!’ he says. ‘Not real?
How could you say such a thing?’
For a moment, I don’t get it.